New interactive website tracks school finances in N.Y., N.J.

ALBANY >> The Federal Reserve Bank of NY said Monday that school finances vary wildly here, with some districts spending far more than other on non-instructional costs and wealthy districts getting by on very little state aid.

The report, part of a new website focusing on New York and New Jersey school finances, says that state aid and spending on schools has slowed down noticeably in the past two years. "But districts across the states experience this very differently. For example, Ripley School District in Chautauqua, New York, saw its per-pupil funding drop by nearly $7,000 in 2012, while Taconic Hills Central School District in Columbia, New York, saw an increase of nearly $5,000," the Fed said.

The gap between local revenues resources is also striking, the Fed reported. "For example, 27 percent of the revenue of Lackawanna School District in upstate New York came from local sources in 2012, 66 percent from the state, and 7 percent from the federal government, while 95 percent of the funding for Scarsdale School District in Westchester came from local sources, with less than 1 percent coming from the federal government," the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said.

Lackawanna, a rustbelt mill town south of Buffalo, is one of the poorest districts in the state, with 73 percent of the 2,200 students eligible for free school lunches. The district is 70 percent white, 23 percent black and 7 percent Hispanic

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Scarsdale is located in Westchester, one of the wealthiest addresses in the U.S. None of its 4,600 students qualify for lunch subsides, one of the main indicators of poverty in school districts. Only 4 percent of its students are black or Hispanic, with 84 percent classified as white and 12 percent Asian.

The Fed debuted the new interactive website Monday that profiles the finances of school districts across New York state and New Jersey.

The Fed said "on average, school districts allocate almost half of their budget to instructional expenditures, with the remainder going to non-instructional expenditures (such as instructional support, transportation, and utilities) and to 'other expenditures' (such as interest on debt and inter-district transfers)." But those numbers also vary widely from district to district.

The Fed said the new website's maps allow users "to dive right into the data. Users can explore common trends, such as funding spikes from the federal stimulus intended to combat the recession, and also zoom in on any particular school district. The format also makes it easy to compare any school finance indicator across school districts and states, at a certain point in time or over time."

Maps are based on data from the Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and the state Education Department.